Most of us realize we’re in a recession right now. It’s kind of a big deal after all.

But the Bush Administration (Bush seen above, showing just how small the recession really is) still likes to say that our economy is not in trouble. Now, instead of just lying to everyone, they decided to hide public information about the economy. EconomicIndicators.gov was a government run website that provided financial information to citizens and was named by Forbes to be one of the best sites on the Internet:

“This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments.”

Too bad this tool will be defunct in a matter of days. The administration decided to shut it down on March 1 because of “budgetary constraints.” Hmm. But wait–you can still access this information on another site and the administration is offering a free quarterly subscription! After that–sorry: you have to pay to learn about our economic information.

Sure it costs money to run a web site. But I guess Bush didn’t make an allowance in his $3.1 trillion budget for the upcoming fiscal year to keep economic material transparent. How convenient.

One Response

Seriously, “Bugetary Constraints” is such a lame excuse given the governments budget. I don’t think the cost of a website (server, designers, and people to update it) is really too much to fit into the budget. Hopefully Obama brings this back into operation when he’s pres.